The head of an experiment that appeared to show subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light has resigned from his post.

Prof Antonio Ereditato oversaw results that appeared to challenge Einstein’s theory that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light.

When the news first broke back in September, and we posted Neutrinos Move Faster Than Light?, most of us were skeptical; but there were a few who thought Einstein was toast. You remember Discoveroid David Klinghoffer’s post. He was gloating that if relativity is collapsing, then evolution could collapse too. See Another One Bites the Dust?

After that, as we reported here, Ellis Washington, the leading creationist intellectual at WorldNetDaily, said:

Nothing in science is absolutely certain. Even today scientists are proving one of Einstein’s bedrock theories to be false – that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

11 responses to “Faster Than Light Neutrinos: The Epilogue”

No, this is not the end of the saga: a definitive test on the dedicated equipment at OPERA is expected in May. There are also several other results equally at issue: MINOS comes to mind.

Meanwhile, the speed of light varies with the medium, and divergent speeds, both subluminal and superluminal, are regularly observed with solitons. These are shock-waves which fall outside the ambit of Einstein’s Special Relativity. So the speed is also not the whole story: the Zitterbeweung reported on the second OPERA run with short packets suggests massive Dirac neutrinos rather than massless Weyl neutrinos. We can still thank Antonio for the emulsion-tracking device itself, and that very interesting result.

I remain concerned that we seem to have a culture of fundamentalism in “particle” physics which simply doesn’t touch. Sides with what is happening in condensed matter physics, where the new physics of supoerconduction is routine. We seem to be haunted by a new corpuscular dogmatism, which does notr bode well for the nuclear industry.

I’d see this as a “Science wins either way.” If they do confirm that neutrinos are still only travelling at the speed of light, then all of those creationists who charted science’s downfall will have some explaining to do (though we will be hard pressed to get them to admit that). If by some very remote chance we find out that neutrinos are superluminal, then we can use it to show how science can change with new evidence, followed by pointing out that creationism / ID has never and will never change regardless of the evidence.

Gary says: “If by some very remote chance we find out that neutrinos are superluminal, then we can use it to show how science can change with new evidence …”

There’s more to it than that. In science, the evidence is all that matters, so we won’t see the sprouting of an FTL neutrino sect that runs around demanding the “strengths and weaknesses” of relativity be taught in science classes.

@SC: I don’t know what a “relativity troll” is, but his comment was so… interesting?… that I did a quick Google on “Orwin O’Dowd” and came across this. (NOTE: Anyone who uses the term “corpuscular dogmatism” in a simple article asking “Do neutrinos go faster than light?” is sending up massive red flags in my mind.) I believe both (the comment above and the link) are written by the same person. I figured my question would confirm this.

It appears that Ereditato did the proper thing when he released the results and asked for others to test them. Why is he stepping down?

Clearly if the experiment worked correctly the first time, other labs would not have had to spend resources recreating the experiment. Perhaps he feels responsible for wasting those resources. But his response to the situation set a good example, and it’s a shame to see him lose his position over this.

Yeah, I agree too, Ereditato doesn’t seem to have done much wrong. There was an article a few weeks back about it possibly be due to a loose wire connection to the GPS timing device. If true, I guess one could say that he should’ve done timing calibration tests of all his physical equipment before publication. But IMO these are incredbily complex experiments, and I can’t see this as a firing offense.

Moreover, if the true reason for the timing offset is discovered, this only changes the interpretation of the results, not the validity of the data. We are still left with a very comprehensive measurement of neutrino speeds….its just a measurement that confirms theory rather than refuting it.